This week I’ve decided to go for another mini mystery object from the Grant Museum Micrarium. Any idea what this is and what it’s from?
As always, your thoughts, questions and suggestions can go in the comments box below.
Also, if you have any images of tiny things you can share them on Twitter with the hashtag #MicroMultitudes to win a signed copy the excellent new book by Ed Yong – it’s well worth a read!
Have fun!
Zygoma 
Why shut my mouth! No idea what it be, honey!
🙂
Incomplete arthropod?
Haven’t a bloomin’ clue, except that, rest of the exoskeleton apart, those side attachments make me think of marine chappies that can see into the UV and IR parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and have apparently 16 photoreceptors to our three or four.
As always, I expect to be wrong, but it will be fun while it lasts.
Looks like the mouthparts of something to me?
Yep! Now the tricky bit…
incomplete marine arthropod… i came to the same deformed conclusion:
thorax and abdomen check, check… head?? massive forelimbs exit the body just fore of the feathery hind ones???
can i have my grandmother’s beehive, egg-laying alien back please?
Problem is the ones I was thinking of, not being insects, do not have a well defined difference between thorax and abdomen, but are multiply segmented all the way through. If this is one of those it has lost most of its segments.
Arthropod, and incomplete, is I think secure, but as to anything more specific (and we’re talking about the most specious clade of animals in the world!) I haven’t a clue.
Let’s hope it’s your beehive haired granny pic…
Oh all right. Those are clearly folded wings by its side right? So a hexapod. Not marine then. Male? Not a beetle, I think. But what, then, given I now suspect that those side thingies are wing covers?
I am free associating here, but wondering if it is either one of the Hymenoptera or one of those specialised social cockroaches in fertile breeding mode?
As always, I expect to be wrong, but it’s fun. Kind of James Joyce meets Willi Hennig…
Getting warmer!
Not a clue but I’d hang the picture on my wall – fantastic. Keep them coming.
Glad you like the pic. You’d love the Micrarium!
Half an earwig?
OK, this is a thought one.
I can see a glossa. two pairs of palps, prementom and mandible.
Probably homoptera or hemiptera.
Definitely on the right track!
I would say a piercing and sucking device.
OK, I’m confused. Are you saying the bottom right bit is the front end of the animal (or fruit or fungus or whatever this is)?
Or are you talking about bits towards the top left that I have no difficulty in failing to identify?
And since Paolo has announced this on Twitter and Facebook, may I just say “Congratulations on your soon-to-be move to Ireland”!
I am glad some of the good ‘uns are getting away from the (Teresa) mayhem of Brexit and getting their dream jobs!
Selfishly, am hoping this does not stop, or greatly interrupt, our Friday mystery object fun.
Don’t worry, I think it will mean there will simply be a MUCH bigger collection to choose objects from 🙂
Hmmm…the bottom right end reminds me of the tail end of certain ‘small’ crustaceans. And what I’m calling the back legs (long blade-like pointing with the ‘tail’ look like the back legs of a mole crab….WAIT! Total change of plans. It’s someone’s face. The little black dots would be eyes then….like on a stalk-like structures. Silence of the crabs!
That would be Joe Vans’ grandma with her beehive then?
I’ll be honest, this one is pretty much beyond my ken. Yes it has aspects of the blattoids to it, but folding wings (which I think they are), are not one of the features of that clade as far as I know. I am pretty certain this is not a hymenopteran a dipteran or a coleopteran, but insects are so speciose I don’t have a handle on where to start. And I am possibly wrong about it being an insect at all.
It is an insect and it’s in one of the groups you think it isn’t 😉
Ah well, then Chris was correct with the first response here.
I live and learn!